Text Editing

For mostly all examples we use sed utility with substitution command. The syntax is pretty simple:

sed -i 's/SEARCH-WORD/REPLACMENT-WORD/gI' input
# or for regular expressions:
sed -i 's/SEARCH-REGEXP/REPLACMENT-WORD/gi' input

• The -i option edit and update text file in place. For piped input from another utility it is not necessary
• The / are delimiters between words or regexp.
• sed -i 's/SEARCH-REGEXP/REPLACMENT-WORD/gI' - I flag make search case insensitive
• sed -i 's/SEARCH-REGEXP/REPLACMENT-WORD/gI' - for text files input use g flag to make search global across the whole file

print first N chars

We want print first N chars. For example, print first 6 chars from every line of our example file:

cat example.txt | sed 's/^\(.\{1,6\}\).*/\1/'
France
Englan
Japan:
USA:Wa
Τηεοδ2

• sed 's/^(.{1,6}).*/\1/' - a regular expression indicating the beginning of a line
• sed 's/^\(.\{1,6\}\).*/\1/' - regexp for capture minimal first and max any 6 chars and remember
• sed 's/^(.{1,6}).*/\1/' - mark all remaining characters
• sed 's/^(.{1,6}).*/\1/' - substitute all whole line with remembered chars from step 2

print chars from N to M

~] cat example.txt 
France:Paris:euro
England:London:pound sterling
Japan:Tokio:yen
USA:Washington:dollar
Τηεοδ29:Ελλάδα

We need print chars from position 3 to 8 - we need don't caputre first 2 chars and than capture next 6 chars. For our example:

# capture chars from position 3 to 8:
X = 3 
Y = 8  
# new variables for sed command:
N = X -1
M = Y - N
# sed command:
sed 's/^.\{M\}\(.\{1,N\}\).*/\1/'

~] cat example.txt | sed 's/^.\{2\}\(.\{1,6\}\).*/\1/'
ance:P
gland:
pan:To
A:Wash
εοδ29:

• sed 's/^.\{2\}\(.\{1,6\}\).*/\1/' - print chars from position 3 to 8
  • sed 's/^.{2}(.{1,6}).*/\1/' - command for substitution text in sed
  • sed 's/^.\{2\}(.{1,6}).*/\1/' - capture any first 2 chars (and don't remember)
  • sed 's/^.{2}\(.\{1,6\}\).*/\1/' - capture next 1-6 chars (minimal one and max exactly 6 chars) after two chars from step 1 and remember them, all chars between () are memorized
  • sed 's/^.{2}(.{1,6}).*/\1/' - capture any possible others chars after what we remember
  • sed 's/^.{2}(.{1,6}).*/\1/' - delete all captured chars and substitute it with first capture group

print chars from N to M for column

We need print chars from position 3 to position 6

~] cat example.txt
France:Paris:euro
England:London:pound sterling
Japan:Tokio:yen
USA:Washington:dollar
Τηεοδ29:Ελλάδα

~] cat example.txt | awk 'BEGIN { FS=":" } { print $2 }' | sed 's/^.\{2\}\(.\{1,4\}\).*/\1/'
ris
ndon
kio
shin
λάδα 

• awk 'BEGIN { FS=":" } { print $2 }' - set input field separator variable to ":" char
• awk 'BEGIN { FS=":" } { print $2 }' - print only second column
• sed -e 's/^.\{2\}\(.\{1,4\}\).*/\1/' - explanation is described in example above

Note:

When use a regexp for capture exactly 4 chars - {4}, we get a mismatch. That's why we have to use regexp for capture minimal 1 chars and maximum 4 chars.

~] cat example.txt | awk 'BEGIN { FS=":" } { print $2 }' | sed 's/^.\{2\}\(.\{4\}\).*/\1/'
Paris
ndon
Tokio
shin
λάδα

append some text to every line

We need append comment char "#" to every line:

~] cat example.txt | sed 's/^/#/'
#France:Paris:euro
#England:London:pound sterling
#Japan:Tokio:yen
#USA:Washington:dollar
#Τηεοδ29:Ελλάδα

• sed 's/^/#/' - command for substitution text in sed
• sed 's/^/#/' - regulax expression matched start of line
• sed 's/^/#/' - substitute start of line with # char